


coda

by necrotype



Category: Interstellar (2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:16:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2663255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necrotype/pseuds/necrotype
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fragments from Edmund's planet, after Amelia Brand landed alone and tired</p>
            </blockquote>





	coda

Brand remembers Cooper like this: grinning with that strange smile of his, like a boy again, eager to be out in the empty regions of their solar system as they discuss theories of physics that don’t really mean anything yet; joking with TARS, sarcasm dripping when the robot’s light flashes for a brief moment; inhaling sharply when they see Romilly again after 23 years, curving in on himself out of shame and guilt and fear. Calloused hands, roughened from years of reluctant farming and constant dusty wind, white-knuckled on the edge of a table as he hears his children grow older than him. Raspy gasps for air on the ice clouds of an unhospitable planet. Silence, when he detaches from Endurance to be drawn into Gargantua’s gravitational pull.

Brand remembers her father like this: a good man, a man who didn’t send this team out on a mission to remake humanity from cells and cells and cells on distant planets. She remembers him as a man who spent his days trying to solve that ongoing puzzle, hands nearly dyed white from the chalk and eyes darkened by a tiredness that never went away. She blocks out ragged sigh that Cooper made when Murph broke down on the video screen and told that horrible secret.

Brand remembers Edmund like—no, she tries not to remember Wolf at all. A persistent hurt will stay in her throat as long as she’s on this planet, this new home for all of humanity, but she will not remember the man who found it. She moves on when she places the last rock on his grave, made years too late. Love brought her here, but it’s love for others already lost that will keep her here. The sun is warm on her skin when she walks away from him.

 

It rains on her fifth day.

The rain feels like it’s seeping into her bones, and it almost reminds her of the shallow ocean of Miller’s planet, or the pods for sleeping through a long journey. But this is a warm rain, the sort of summer rain that happens on a lazy evening when she would sit outside and listen to the world around her, and the sound of drops splattering on the dirt below her feet sends her to her knees. 

 

She thinks about going to sleep, sometimes. The loneliness of this planet (Edmunds, the name is on the tip of her tongue always, but she thinks their new home should have a different name) is almost unbearable; the cells growing happily in her sterile tents do not make for good company. Once, she tried to speak to the new planet for humanity—she didn’t know why, but it seemed right, to thank someone for this place—but her voice cracked, throat raspy from weeks of silence. The horizon is endless and empty, and no one will say a word back to her.

The closest she’s gotten is standing over the open pod, fingers brushing against the casing and dipping slightly in, bemoaning the thought of spending another second in the quiet. The nighttime sky stretches overhead, and it’s beautiful in a way that hasn’t been seen on Earth in decades, without haze and dust clouding the stars. She pauses, looks back outside into the sky to consider the vast blackness that took her family and friends from her, that might bring people back to her.

She closes the pod with a little too much force and instead sleeps under the stars for the night. Her dreams are filled with ships landing amidst a swirl of dirt.

 

A ship lands just as a sun begins to peak over the horizon. She’s in the first cell tent when she hears it, the whir of an engine powering down and a thud as something heavy hits the soft ground outside. She pauses for a moment, unsure if she’s dreaming, hearing things, something that would negate this reality she hopes is happening.

Cooper rushes into the tent before she can decide what to do.

Brand blinks rapidly, and her throat hurts like she’s about to cry, but she’s too shocked to do anything but blink. He yells at her, grinning widely, and the words sound like static to her ears. When he wraps his arms around her, lips pressed into a smile against the curve of her neck, she opens her mouth to speak for the first time in ages.

“Hello.”


End file.
